Pam Rodway of the Soil Association receives MBE

30 December 2012

Pam Rodway, Project Manager at Soil Association Scotland, has received an MBE in the 2013 New Year honours list in recognition for services to the promotion of Sustainable Food Production and Food Education in Scotland.  

A member of the Soil Association since 1972, Pam has been involved in sustainable farming, food production and food education for over 40 years. Pam’s most recent work is with Soil Association Scotland’s highly successful Crofting Connections project, but her background lies in organic farming and artisan cheese-making, for which she and her husband have won several awards, including Radio 4 Food Programme Producer of the Year Award in 2001. She trained several cheese-makers, including three local school leavers, who have gone on to find good work in the food industry.

Pam has led the way with a number of projects that celebrate Scotland’s small-scale sustainable food producers and help them find routes to market, including being a founder member of Moray Farmers’ Market in 1999 and helping to launch Living Food at Cawdor Castle in 2006 - a celebration of organic and local produce in the Highlands.

Speaking about the award, Pam said; “It’s a great honour to receive an MBE. My passion has always been to celebrate small-scale artisan food producers as the tradition bearers, guardians of the landscape, the soil, the lochs and the seas and through passing on knowledge, skills and tastes that have stood the test of time in Scotland’s most iconic areas.

I’m very excited that the Scottish Government has an enlightened and comprehensive food policy which has been shaped by a wide range of contributors to the debate from public health, education, food and farming, science and technology. Being part of that dialogue has been very exciting, especially in the expansion of food education as a vital part of health and wellbeing in the school curriculum. We need to create good opportunities for our young people to access Scotland’s best food and to contribute to its production.”

Along with her husband Nick, Pam started the Edinburgh Cyrenians Farm, which recently celebrated its 40th Anniversary of working to link social and environmental justice by providing a wholesome, family-farm context for people who struggle with poverty and homelessness to start to plan the rest of their lives.

Pam has been very involved in the Slow Food movement, pioneering the Slow Food lunches at Soil Association annual conferences, the first of which was in Edinburgh in 2004. Involving bringing small-scale farmers, fishermen and millers, artisan bakers, brewers and cheese-makers to the table to serve their own food to conference delegates, making a delicious and memorable link between the lunch plate and the conference agenda. As a founder board member of Slow Food UK, she helped to organise the Slow Food UK Founding Congress at Sabhal Mor Ostaig in the Isle of Skye in Summer 2005.

Pam has been working for the Soil Association for the past 10 years including setting up Food for Life Scotland, which seeks to put fresh, local, sustainably produced food onto the school dinner plate and to support this with good food education. Most recently, she has managed Crofting Connections which promotes active crofting, safeguards crofting heritage and traditions, and seeks to engage children and young people with the shaping of vibrant, healthy crofting communities throughout the Highlands & Islands in the 21st century.

ENDS
For press enquiries contact the Soil Association press office:
Natasha Collins-Daniel, Press Office Manager – 0117 914 2448 / 07827 925380
Ncollins-daniel@soilassociation.org

Notes to Editors:
http://www.soilassociation.org/scotland
http://croftingconnections.com/
http://www.cyreniansfarm.org.uk/